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Listen to your inner voice

There are times when
I read an interesting perspective, only to discover that I, too, had been
tantalizingly close in my unpublished draft (there are many). Why didn’t I
publish them then?

Whatever little I had
written was written overcoming time-scarcity, laziness, lethargy and sense of
futility in one magical moment when ego momentarily triumphed humility. What else explains a writer’s foolish
endeavor to add more to the tomes of printed material accumulated since writing
was invented!

There were times when
I had voluntarily silenced myself to escape the scathing disapproval I had come
to expect from others. When I later
chanced upon a work that reinforced what I had always felt (but didn’t
articulate), I couldn’t help feeling stupid to have not pursued that line of
thought to the end. During one of my maths class back in school, I effortlessly
waded through the complexities of the problem only to reach a dead-end and gave
it up thinking I got it wrong somewhere. Imagine my frustration, when only a
few minutes later the teacher went through the same sequence and made a leap
from exactly where I faltered to reach the solution!

So, it is amid these
ruminations that Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”
chanced upon my eyes today:

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected
thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of
art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by
our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the
whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say
with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time,
and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another”.

Does this mean that
we don’t ever need to amend our position upon stumbling new information? I, for
one, changed my stand from Telangana-agnostic to pro-Telangana in this very
blog. Indeed, blind belief in one’s opinions, without acquainting oneself with necessary
information and conflicting viewpoints, veers dangerously close to narcissism
and associated personality conditions. And that’s the stuff many of the cult
movements are made of. Many cults derive their viral potency from exploiting
the human need of laying the blame of one’s failure or shortcomings at someone
else’s (or something) door.

On the other hand, there
are limits to human ability to slurp all information as we can never reach the
bedrock of oceanic knowledge. There cannot be a “final word”, it can at best
only be the penultimate one because by the time we’ve captured all, we are
forced to accommodate another newly-created dimension. Indeed, pursuing this line to the logical end
would entail having no values to fight for, as there is nothing of lasting
value by this nihilistic interpretation. So, we cannot allow this to deter us
from our quest in weaving together whatever is known into a coherent
perspective.

We are bound to be wrong
many times because we’re not reporters recording the past that’s well-settled. We
connect the dots, try to make sense of the chaos and project the present
happenings into a cohesive viewpoint, sometimes into the future too. In this,
more than any pursuit, we will fail, as shall any human endeavor. But that is
no reason to stop trying.

Often, the emotional overreaction
to defeat is more fatal than the defeat itself. It stops us from
renewing our efforts and approaching a fresh line of action which might have
fetched results. Instead of shutting oneself inside metaphorical doors, we
could have engaged in a parallel activity until the time was apt for a
reinvigorated attack. Whether or not we like it, as long as we’re here, some
kind of work will be thrust on us. Irrespective of how much you crave it, men
will never be released from the burden of performance. In fact, the very romantic
notion of wanting to be respected irrespective of one’s performance marks the
undoing of many men in their relationships. Men will continue to be judged
based on their material worth, and thus, to have one’s mental point of origin
outside of oneself is such a self-defeating attitude. So, we may as well take
the heat of other’s opinion in our stride, and the efforts to rebut them may
instead be channelized in one’s area of interest.

Many endeavors fail
because the person lacks the self-confidence necessary to keep going when no
one is appreciating, much less understanding his work. Attempting to find the
source of validation from others is the surest way to burn your gifts. On the
counterfactual, if you compromise, you’ll sure have people around and a lot to
boast about to others. But these stick on you merely because they have been put
on. You’ll get used the noise after a while and still perceive deafening
silence in your heart. Such association holds no intrinsic value to you or your
growth.

Listen to your inner
voice and work incessantly towards where it guides you. The initial excitement
might take a nap after a while, and you might be experiencing your profession’s
counterpart of “writer’s block”. But keep going because the inspiration will arrive soon enough.

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